Transformer talk.

If you'd like to hear me being grilled for an hour by a pair of fans from the UK about Transformers, TMNT, Star Trek, and other exciting chitchat and behind-the-scenes stuff, click here.

So DeForest Kelley walks into D.C. Fontana's office...

...during the filming of the Season Two opening episode of Star Trek, "Amok Time." And with a mischievous grin he tells her a line that's been going around the soundstage:

You have to pay T'Pau
to prong
T'Pring.

Unfortunately, I shut off Audry's little Flip Mino camcorder an instant before Dorothy herself told this anecdote, but I did manage to capture most of the highlights of this historic occasion, the first time Dorothy had met the woman who played T'Pring, Spock's betrothed in the episode.

It all started when Audry introduced Wendy Pini to Arlene Martell, who had a table next to our publishing company's booth at an SF convention. "Amok Time" is one of Wendy's favorite Trek episodes, and when she learned that Arlene has never met Dorothy, she decided to throw a party so the two ladies could meet. By the way, Dorothy was my first story editor, commissioning the animated Star Trek script I wrote with Russell Bates; and Theodore Sturgeon, who wrote "Amok Time," was one of my writing teachers a the Clarion Workshop. (As was Harlan Ellison, who wrote an Outer Limits episode Arlene apeared in, "Demon With a Glass Hand.")

Also in attendance: Marv Wolfman, voice actor Crispin Freeman, and Richard Pini of course. Grab some punch and enjoy.

Fine Culture: My Part in its Downfall

Walking around London on our last day here, I couldn't help but notice the "Transformers" and "Star Trek" posters on virtually every bright red double-decker bus.



All that was needed was a new TMNT movie, and I'd have had a perfect hat-trick. It got me thinking about the influence I've had on culture, and my strange place in it. I have been involved in myth-making and character creation for some of the biggest pop-culture phenomena of the 20th century. Nobody knows who I am. But when they find out, they frequently start doing the "we're not worthy" bows. (Seriously. This has happened to me in places as desperate as the Electronic Arts office in L.A. and a subway in Tokyo.)

I never cared much for adulation or fame. But I'd kill for a way to monetize my influence! Suggestions welcome.

Trek

As someone who has left his grubby fingerprints on the "Star Trek" franchise, I figured I'd chime in on the new J.J. Abrams reboot. Even before it opened, the film had my heart for casting Simon Pegg as Scottie, but the rest of the cast is note-perfect as well. I love the redesign of the Enterprise, inside and out, and in fact I wish they'd slowed down a little to let us see more of it. As for the people who gripe that the bridge looks like an Apple Store, I say Apple Stores only wish they looked that good.

The time-travel excuse for the reboot is quite clever. Not only does it allow the main characters to take all their positions on the Enterprise over the course of a few days, it in essence frees the franchise for the burden of its history, while retaining the characters and basic situations that have always been the core of "Star Trek"'s appeal. (And best of all, it means that Kirk didn't die on that stupid bridge at the end of "Generations.")

On the other hand, the story is not so hot. In fact, it could be argued that there is no story. The film is filled with set-pieces which could be excised without the slightest impact on the plot. There is a massive infodump in the middle of the film which could charitably be described as inelegant. And the villain (named Nero, and echoing precisely nothing about his Roman namesake) basically just sits around waiting to pound the good guys and in general Do Bad Things. His situation -- the captain of ship full of Romulan miners waiting 25 years to get revenge -- is sort of interesting, but its ramifications have not been thought through at all.

But of course, the bad guy is just an excuse for the good guys to unite in a common cause. And at the end of the film, when Chris Pine sweeps onto the bridge in full Kirk mode and calls out "Bones!', the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and I forgot all about whatever deficiencies the past two hours might have had.

Get these guys back out in space as soon as possible -- and next time give them a story about the human condition.

Simon Pegg on prepping to play Scottie

"I went to live in Scotland for five years and studied as an engineer. I'm that Method."